


Puppetmaster

by Laylah



Series: Concord [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: All-Troll 'verse, Ashen Hookup, Comfort, Gen, New Universe, Pale Overtures, Strife - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 23:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/644247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holding your poker face is harder than it's ever been, and you can't tell how much that's because it's <i>Dave</i> and how much it's because of your awful new troll powers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dirk: complicate matters.

**Author's Note:**

> I started this just before all the trickster powerups got going, so that's about where you should assume canon ceases to apply; people's existing ships and mental states are extrapolated from that pre-tricksterized point. Thank you. ^^

It's a damn lucky thing you've still got your shades, because this sun sensitivity thing you have right now? Not the best part of your rebooted body. Not even close. You could make a pretty long list of not-the-best parts, but the concise summary is: why the hell do you have to be a troll? Ugh. (You might be looking forward to sitting down with your new pants parts and giving them a test drive, though, just a little bit. Junk that hugs you back? Yeah, color you a reasonably interested shade of gray. Gray and blue, from the one glimpse you've taken so far at said junk.)

The setting isn't your strong suit, either—you're wandering the edge of a forest, where it gives way to some kind of prairieland. Nothing manmade as far as the eye can see, and you haven't been able to raise a signal on your phone. Twice now you've ducked under a tree branch and failed to account for your horns, and the uncomfortable reverberations through your head make you wince.

When you spot movement further along the treeline, you equip your katana out of habit. You walk closer, and the other guy does too. Gray and red, another pair of shades, another pair of candy-colored horns. His sweep backward in curving arcs, almost a full semicircle, ridged along the outer edge. The species might be all wrong, but you'd know that poker face anywhere.

"Dave," you say.

He nods, infinitesimal. You've come to a stop about six feet apart. "Bro," he says.

You have no idea where to start. He's not the version from your universe, and you're not the brother he remembers, and now you're both standing here considering that, waiting for the other to make a false step. It would have been so much easier to run into anyone else. Even Jake, probably—at least you could predict how Jake would bluster, and you'd know what kind of answers you were supposed to make to keep everything comfortably superficial, the conversation you don't want to have put off for one more day.

The silence stretches well past the point of getting uncomfortable. You'd fidget if you dared. With anyone but Dave, you could recover from showing weakness for a second, but this is like...the code of broshido that you've both aspired to master all your lives. Which one of you had the better teacher? Which one of you learned the lessons more thoroughly? Ultimate showdown of ultimate bro destiny, right here.

You wish that was actual irony.

The tall grass rustles off to your right. You don't look. The odds are pretty good that Dave can still flashstep as a troll. Anything else is going to be slower and less subtle when it comes after you.

Yep. When the stalking predator lunges out of the grass in its charge, you and Dave split at the same instant. You have no idea how the thing managed to hide well enough to get that close—it moves like a cat, has scales like a lizard, and is the size of a small _house_. It has also just made its last mistake.

You aim low. The game taught you this one—when you're up against a big, powerful enemy of unknown strength, first strike to immobilize. You catch it in what looks like an elbow joint, and your sword sticks for just long enough that you panic. The monster bellows and turns toward you, and you lurch, yanking your sword free. Dave needs to get it from the other side now, go in for the hamstring.

He does, pretty much as soon as you picture it. The monster rears up, clawing at the air, and you're still off balance but if Dave can get under it for a second—he does exactly what you want him to, gets a shallow slash across the belly and rolls out of the way. You gather your strength and jump up on the thing's back while it hunkers down, unwilling to expose its belly again. You whip your sword up and out as you run up the length of its spine and drive the point into the monster's eye. Three feet of unbreakable steel through the brain and that ugly bastard isn't going to be giving any Striders a hard time again. It crumples under you and you ride it down to the ground.

You turn around just in time for Dave's fist to catch you in the jaw.

Even as you're flying backward off the neck of your kill, you're already thinking _where the fuck did that come from_ , and he's following you in this too-smooth motion that's half leaping and half flying. Your katana is still in the corpse but Dave's broken blade is in his hand. You roll when you hit the ground, shoulder first, and Dave lands on you before you can get your feet back under you.

"You sick fuck," he rasps, and you can see every sharp pointed tooth between his black lips. "Don't you _ever_ fuck with my head like that again."

You open your mouth to ask what he's talking about but he puts the edge of his blade to your throat and you say nothing. What did you do? What made him think you were—

There's another layer of input in your brain, a thing you hadn't really been paying attention to in the heat of the fight. It's a blazing, jolting stream of feelings that don't belong to you: Dave's anger, panic, fear. He's afraid of you? You push that feeling a little further and realize he's afraid of you because you can _make him do things_.

You reach into his mind and _shove_. He snarls at you, but he staggers to his feet, backing off, letting you up. His fury hammers against your mind, red-hot. "I'm going to gut you," he says through tightly clenched teeth.

"You had a blade at my throat, bro," you point out, trying to sound more calm than you feel, or at least more calm than he sounds. You don't let him move while you go retrieve your katana.

"You _threw me under that monster_ ," he growls back. You stare at him, monster brain goo dripping off your blade. You didn't mean to do that. You didn't know you _could_ do that during that fight.

"Strife it out?" you ask. You don't know what else to offer.

His anger goes cold and focused, with an edge on it like your blade. "Let go of me," he says.

You're about to, when an unfamiliar female voice asks, "What in the name of the moons are you doing?" Her voice is crisp and clipped, her mind a bright, chilly presence.

"He's pulling a Vriska," Dave says.

The female troll punches you in the jaw, too, and as you hit the ground you wonder if you should be grateful it was on the other side. Your tenuous grip on Dave's mind falls apart, and before you can get up again you hear the rattling growl of a goddamn _chainsaw_ , the sound of a thousand vintage horror movies raring to life somewhere near your knees.

You scramble to your feet, trying to keep your eyes on both of them. Dave would be a tricky enough fight, but if he has an ally and you don't know her capabilities, shit. You're not making the first move.

"What is your name?" the female troll asks. She holds the chainsaw casually at the ready, like it's no thing.

"Dirk," you say. Her mind is much less of an open book than Dave's, and that seems weird. You'd have thought being a Strider would give Dave an advantage there. You were always pretty sure the Dave from your own universe was pretty stone-cold untouchable, anyway.

"I am Kanaya," she says. "Since Karkat was adamant that we try to avoid killing each other the second we arrived in the new universe, I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Explain to me what was happening here."

"What the hell," Dave says. "You're asking for his side first?"

"I am not here to take sides," Kanaya says. "I am here to prevent casualties."

You might actually like her a little. "Okay," you say. "Dave and I ran into each other out here, and—" and then it turns out narrative causality likes to fuck with you the same way twice, as a huge shadow sweeps by overhead and something up there screeches.

"Into the trees," Kanaya says without looking up. "Now."

The three of you bolt for cover, away from the dead monster and under the shadow of the trees. Behind you the scavenging bird thing screeches again, and you glance over your shoulder just long enough to get an impression of huge, leathery wings. That's enough recon for now. You keep running.

When you're far enough under the trees that you can't hear the scavenger anymore, all three of you slow to a stop. You're not winded. Your body feels like it could keep that up for a while, honestly. You file that for future reference.

"Let's try that again," Kanaya says. She doesn't sound out of breath either, and you didn't even see what she did with the chainsaw but she's not holding it now. You're going to have to watch yourself around her.

"We'd pretty much just met up when we got interrupted by Pounce the wonder lizard there. I went into the fight thinking about how we could work together to take it down, which apparently Dave's brain interpreted as instructions."

"You were in my head, dragging me around like one of your damn puppets," Dave growls.

"I didn't even know that was possible," you say, trying to keep your tone reasonable. "Obviously there was no malicious intent."

"Like your lack of malicious intent would have saved me if that thing had crushed my head in," Dave says. "And you sure as fuck knew you were doing it the second time."

You raise an eyebrow. Holding your poker face is harder than it's ever been, and you can't tell how much that's because it's _Dave_ and how much it's because of your awful new troll powers. "Blade at my throat, bro, we covered that. You'd take drastic measures to redress that situation too, in the reverse."

He's so pissed at you right now it's making you feel physically ill. How do trolls live with this bullshit? "Gotcha. No warnings next time," he says.

"No next time," Kanaya intervenes crisply. Her anger is much more controlled, much more precise. "If either of you aggresses the other physically or psychically, I will carve the offender a new waste chute. That is a promise."

Dave makes an exaggerated grossed-out face. "Shit, you just turned this into one of those troll quadratic relationships, didn't you."

"Hey, you're right," you say as the idea sinks in. "This is textbook ashen, isn't it?"

Kanaya nods. "And that is a quadrant I would very much like to be done with, in all honesty. So I do hope you can resolve your problems with each other quickly."

Dave shrugs. You can watch him putting the coolkid facade back on, and you can still hear the jangle of how much he's not feeling it. "Long as he doesn't try to get into my head ever again, we're cool."

You decide you're not going to mention that you can still hear his thoughts. It'd just piss him off again and it's not like you know how to turn it off yet. There must be a way to turn it off, right? Otherwise you'd have a whole race that was constantly paranoid and angry and at each other's throats.

Somehow that line of reasoning isn't as reassuring as you want it to be.

"We should try to find the others," Kanaya says. "At the very least, the other members of your sessions and the surviving players from mine should also have arrived here."

"At the very least?" you ask.

She looks down; you're embarrassed by how clearly you can feel her regret. "There were some casualties in my session whom I was sorry to lose," she says.

"Come on, chin up," Dave says. "If our glorious prize package includes a free species swap for the members of Team Earth, it's gotta have some goodies in store for Team Alternia." You wonder what his relationship is to her; he seems to feel some honest affection for her in there somewhere. Probably he'd feel affectionate toward anyone who wasn't you right now.

The three of you wander through the forest, looking for signs that other trolls have been there. While you walk, Kanaya gives you and Dave a crash course on troll castes and the powers most commonly associated with various blood colors. You would have thought he'd know this stuff already, since he was apparently living in close proximity with a couple of trolls for _years_ , but he acts like it's new to him.

You wonder how you'll know when you find evidence of the others in the first place. It's not like you or Dave have a lot of wilderness survival experience to draw on—you'd need somebody like oh god let's not think about Jake now. You can figure it out. It's just a question of learning the patterns and then looking for points of divergence, right?

Like, the little yellow bird that's flying in "notice me" circles just ahead of you. No way that's normal. "Think that's a message?" you ask, nodding at it. "Brownblood animal controlling powers or whatever."

"It seems very likely," Kanaya agrees.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Dave takes a step toward the bird. "Go ahead, little dude, lead us on our magical Disney princess adventure."

All three of you follow the little guy through the forest, and it's definitely leading you on purpose. It stops and chirps at you from an easily-visible branch any time you fall behind too far, like the little jerk is pissed at you for being slow. Like it's somehow your fault that there are thornbushes and dense thickets you have to deal with.

It's obvious when you get close to your destination. You can smell smoke, and you can hear the sound of an argument—or at least half of one. There's only one voice that's loud enough to pick out easily. Dave laughs. "Sounds like Karkles is settling in just fine."

Kanaya smiles. "It will be good to see him again." Someone they both know and you don't, awesome. Could this day get better?

You need to stop tempting this universe. The three of you walk out into the clearing the bird led you to, and you're almost immediately swamped with the impressions of other minds. You lock down your face as hard as you possibly can and try to come up with a beat or a white noise pattern or _anything_ that you could use as background noise in your head. There are probably about a dozen trolls in the clearing, various sizes and horn shapes, and at first glance you don't see anyone who looks like a grayfaced version of one of your friends.

The ones nearest you are a pair with the ridiculous headgear of longhorn steers. Your guide bird lands on the horns of the littler one, who grins and elbows the bigger one. "That's two groups, for me, and just one, for you," he says.

"Doing pretty great, dude," the bigger one says. "But I'm not giving up yet!"

"Hehe, bangarang," the little one says. You're trying so hard not to hear all his surprised pride, you really are. "Uh, hi, Kanaya. And Dave. And, uh, someone I don't know."

You nod. Some of the other trolls are coming over to meet you guys now—there's a sturdy brick of a male whose expression radiates aggravation at the entire world, and a poised female in a golden dress. She's quieter than the others, but you can still feel her relief as she looks at the three of you. "Kanaya," she says.

"Rose." Kanaya steps up and hugs her, hard. You wish to fuck you could shut them out. "It suits you," Kanaya murmurs, and Rose laughs. "Though I'm surprised that your horns match Dirk's rather than Dave's."

You take a closer look at Rose's horns then, because while you've gotten a feel for yours it's not the same as seeing them: hers have a graceful outward curve to them and a gentle backward angle. Compared with the longhorn boys—or even with Dave—you think you've probably lucked out. Then again maybe trolls associate horn size with sexual prowess or something and you're announcing your relative failure.

When she lets go of Kanaya, Rose raises a perfect eyebrow at Dave. He makes a show of rolling his eyes, a whole head-and-shoulders gesture to make sure it's obvious despite the shades. He still steps up for a hug. You scan the other trolls again, trying to find a familiar face.

"Dirk," Rose says. You look back at her. Your face is made of stone, and she has a tiny smile on that doesn't show you a single fang. "I assume the horns are the game's way of telling us how ectobiologically similar we are. With that in mind I offer you a hug fully expecting you to decline."

You nod. "I accept the offer in the spirit it was given," you say, and neither of you make a move toward each other. "Anyone else from my session turned up?"

"Not yet," says the angry troll. He's really got the short nubby end of the horn stick, so you tell yourself you're not worried about your social standing anymore. "Both Nitrams have their chirpbeast scouts out searching, though, and with you guys we're up to seven people found in the last few hours. We've got formerly dead trolls from both Alternia and Beforus, so it's a safe bet everyone is out there."

"They might not be safe themselves," you say, and his thick eyebrows telegraph his suspicion but his mind is completely closed off—some weird quirk in your powers that you'll have to figure out later. You're trying to have a conversation here. You nod in Dave's direction. "We could have been giant lizard food earlier if it hadn't been for the unbeatable martial stylings common to Striders of all universes."

Nubby sighs in hugely exaggerated exasperation. "That's it, I want a do-over! This universe is a fucking _joke_. I will not accept a fucking prize that includes a double helping of Strider-brand bulgeguzzling douchefuckery!"

"Aw, I missed you too, babycakes," Dave snickers.

Rose sighs. "Karkat, why don't you talk to the others about our defensive capabilities? I'll help our new arrivals get settled."

"Right," Karkat says decisively, and you catch a little spike of satisfaction from Rose. He sneers at Dave before he spins on his heel and stalks off, all leashed tension and purpose. You wonder what he'd be like in a strife.

Rose coughs, and you realize you've been staring after him. "This way," she says. "I imagine you're probably hungry."

"Hell yes," Dave says, and you finish, "hell fucking yes," before you've thought twice about it. Dave glares at you. You glare back.

You follow Rose across the clearing, most of which appears to be extremely recent, from the ragged tree stumps still oozing sap. There's an honest-to-fuck treehouse on the far side of the clearing, and a few trolls working on a second one a few yards away. They mostly feel pretty happy, pretty enthusiastic about their little project.

"No sign of Rez yet either, huh?" Dave asks as you come to a stop in front of a smoldering fire pit.

"I'm sure she'll turn up soon," Rose says.

"Yeah, obviously," Dave says, and he's shoving his worry down so hard it's almost hard to hear it. "Nothing keeps that girl down. Hell, any minute somebody's gonna commit some outlandish crime in this little pastoral shithole and bam, there's Terezi D. Pyrope, Esquire, coming down on evil like the cackling razor-edged hammer of justice."

Rose nods, carving pieces off a hanging carcass to distribute. "Terezi has a middle name now?" is all she says.

You tune them out. This new universe isn't making the greatest impression. You might have to second Karkat's vote for a do-over.


	2. Roxy: come to the rescue.

The world you woke up in this morning is so _gorgeous_ , it blows your mind a little. The part where you woke up a troll is less thrilling, but you win some, you lose some. You're pretty sure freaking out about it would just mess you up and not actually fix anything—you've kind of got a whole lifetime's worth of practice at learning that particular lesson.

Your phone doesn't pick up a signal anywhere, which is another thing you're not excited about, but you have a rifle and you have a mission: you're going to find your friends.

The morning doesn't go so great on that front, honestly. You're in sort of the middle of nowhere in a wide-open field, tall grass as far as the eye can see, really big dinosaur-looking things wandering along the horizon. The sunlight hurts your eyes, and after a while all the squinting gives you a headache. You're heading toward a dark smudge on the horizon that you think is a forest. If everyone else is having the same kind of bright-light issues you are, they'll want to go somewhere with shade.

Wow, getting places when you have to just walk is a pain. You march for just about _forever_ and you're still not in the woods. Then a little red bird comes winging down out of the sky and flies a little circle around you, chirping.

"Hey, little guy," you say. "Wow, you sure want something, huh? What's your deal?" You hold up a hand and the bird perches on your fingers, gripping with little prickly claws and staring at you with one shiny black eye. You stare at him, trying to figure him out, and suddenly you're seeing a really weird picture of a clearing full of trolls. All the angles are weird and you're looking down on the scene from above and after a second it clicks: you're getting this picture from the bird's head.

That is _so. cool._

"That mean you could show me the way back there?" you ask, and the bird chirps at you, his tail flicking up and down in this really cute way. You're going to call him Rocket. "Sweet, little dude, I will make sure you get like the best seeds or worms or whatever for being so helpful. Lead the—"

Something crashes just out of sight over the next ridge, and somebody screams.

"Hold that thought," you tell Rocket. "Sometimes a girl's gotta play hero." You run toward the screaming.

The scream seems to have come from a troll girl in a blue dress, and the reason for the screaming is this big snarly horse-panther dinosaur thing that kind of looks like it wants to know if it can have troll for lunch. Totally not a fair fight. It doesn't even look like she has any weapons.

"Leave her alone!" you yell, popping your laser rifle out of your specibus. You fire off a warning shot kind of by accident, because you're still moving and the monster is moving too so you only manage to graze it instead of actually making it pay.

It turns its attention on you and you can feel the weight of its mind, heavy and hot, the overwhelming hunger. For a second you just reel under the alien strength of it. Then you push back. _Leave her alone_ , you demand. _Go away_. The dinosaur thing stands there trembling for a minute, baring its teeth at you while you arm wrestle with its brain, and you're breaking a sweat and baring your teeth and maybe you should just shoot it after all.

Wait, no, you're winning at last. It shudders and snarls and turns away, lumbering off in the general direction of _away_ , where presumably it can find something to eat that isn't a person.

Your legs give out under you a little and you maybe crumple to the warm grassy ground in a completely badass swoon. The troll girl you just saved comes running up the little incline to drop to her knees next to you, and you squint at her but she's not trollified Jane or Callie, which you were hoping maybe a little.

"Thank you so much," she says. "I'm sorry for not being one of your friends. Yet, that is. I'd be happy to be one of your friends in the future, if you'd be willing. I'm Aranea."

"Hi," you say, which is maybe not that witty but you don't have a whole lot of experience meeting new people and also you did just brain wrestle a dinosaur. "I'm Roxy." Rocket lands on your shoulder and chirps. "This is Rocket. Don't worry, I didn't forget," you tell him.

"It's nice to meet you," Aranea says. "Do you need a hand?"

You nod. "That would be p great," you admit. Aranea helps you up, and you discover she's taller than you and also her hand is a nice degree of cool against your skin. "Rocket says there's a bunch of us hanging out together in the woods. You wanna head that way with us?"

She's got a nice smile, for a troll. "Thank you," she says, and doesn't let go of your hand. "That would be lovely."

On the way you ask her some kind of polite small-talk question about the other players from her session, and she pretty much talks your ear off for the rest of the hike. Okay, there's a quick stop when you find a stream and she can't talk and drink at the same time, but apart from that. Your head is spinning with all this stuff about Aranea's friends, and the troll society that she comes from, which is apparently really different from the one that spawned the Batterwitch, and her observations of the troll players from the other troll universe, which _is_ the Batterwitch's universe, and related to but not the same as the one where alternate you was the grownup and Rose was your daughter, not your "mom"—there are too many universes in this soup, is basically your conclusion. She's nice, though, nothing like the witch led you to expect from trolls.

It's honestly probably a pretty good thing that there are some nice trolls, since you apparently have to be one now and all. It would suck to hate your entire species.

There's a whole _lot_ of trolls in the clearing by the time you guys get there, and you get a bunch of introductions to people with excitingly shaped horns whose names you are totally not going to remember until you've talked to them two or three more times each. You'd guess everyone is more or less teenage, but some of them are definitely older than others.

You're starting to get a little sad that your own friends don't seem to be here, and then you make it to the far end of the clearing and see this total goofball talking to a guy with a broken horn. Not even kidding, you recognize him by his Lara Croft booty shorts before you even see his face.

"Jake!" you crow.

He turns, and he's got little doofy antler-style horns, kind of y-shaped and more nubby than pointy. "Roxy! Good golly, am I glad to see you." It takes him two steps to reach you and scoop you up, spinning you around in a dizzy circle as you tuck your face into his shoulder and laugh.

When he puts you down you take a second to get over the dizziness and then you ask, "So we're the first ones of our crew to make it?"

"Dirk _was_ here," Jake says in this annoyed tone, "but he took off the second I got here, so I can't rightly tell you how he's doing."

"That's weird," you say. "You think he was avoiding you?"

Jake nods. "Took one look at me and just dashed off! I have to say it was a tad alarming. A fellow doesn't like to think the very sight of his face is enough to upset one of his chums that much." He keeps looking from you over at Aranea, eyes wide.

"Maybe he's weird about the troll thing," you suggest doubtfully. "You know, they were pretty much our enemies all our lives. No offense."

"None taken at all," Aranea says.

Jake chews on his lip with overgrown and now pointy teeth. "Do you think that's really it?"

You shrug. "It's the best idea I've got so far." You hesitate, because you really don't want to ask, but you probably have to. "I know things have been a little...eh with you guys lately. Maybe he wasn't ready to deal with that?"

"Well, really," Jake says. "I was willing to put on a game face and act happy to see him! I'm a bit put out that he couldn't bring himself to return the favor."

Aranea clears her throat delicately. "Do you know his blood caste?" she asks.

Jake blinks, frowns like he's thinking about it really hard, and shakes his head. "Didn't get a chance to say a word to him! He just—"

"Cerulean," says the guy with the broken horn. "He chose to assist with my project in part because I could prevent him from hearing me."

"Oh dear," Aranea says. You and Jake both give her _looks_ , because that's never a reassuring thing to hear when somebody's talking about one of your best friends. "That's my caste," she says to Jake, which is apparently supposed to mean something to him, from her Significant Look. Jake just blinks at her. "He can hear other trolls' thoughts."

Jake cringes and you try to imagine what that must have been like for someone with Dirk's issues, getting a face full of unfiltered how-Jake-English-feels-about-you. "I gotta find him," you say.

"Should I," Jake starts, and you shake your head.

"You stick around and keep an eye out for Janey. I'll bring Dirk back."

"If you'd be interested," Aranea says, "I could come assist you. I might be able to give him a little assistance in adjusting to his new powers."

You nod. "Hang back a little, maybe? But yeah. That's a good idea."

You send Rocket scouting in the direction Dirk ran off. You can feel his tiny feathery mind as he flits through the trees and you kind of feel bad for Dirk, getting stuck with awkward powers when yours, as far as you can tell, are pretty rad. You follow Rocket into the woods, until you find the tree where he's stopped. He chirps. You look up.

"I don't want to talk about it," Dirk says.

"Di-Stri are you seriously sulking up a tree?" you ask.

"Nope," he says, and that's all. He so is.

You sit down at the base of the tree and settle in as comfortably as you can.

"Roxy," Dirk says, cranky and warning.

"No, it's cool," you say. "We're not talking about it."

He sighs like _you're_ the unreasonable one.

You sit there at the base of his tree and you don't say a word but you're thinking as loud as you can: how it's weird being here, and weird being a troll, but you've already met a couple of nice ones and you're looking forward to having an actual life at last. How you're glad to be having this adventure with your friends. How you're glad to be having this adventure with _Dirk_ , because you love him like he's your own brother even if he's dumb as a box of rocks sometimes.

A twig falls on your head.

Yup. Dumb and sulky and making a huge deal about things, that's your Dirk. Always trying to tough things out on his own like some kind of stoic hero—another stick lands on your head and you brush it off—even when it would be smarter to ask people to help. Even when there are people around who'd be happy to help, like you, and people who have skills he could really use, like Aranea. You hear him shifting in the tree. You dodge and some kind of little nut hits you in the shoulder. You think a little louder.

The thing is, you're there for him. Even when it's awkward, or when it's hard. Even when life really sucks. Even when he repays your efforts by raining down stray bits of nature into your hair like a dork. When he's got trouble, you're there for him. Just like you know he'd never let his friends down if there were any way for him to help—you're not going to let him suffer alone any more than he'd let you. You'll figure this shit out.

More shifting overhead and you prep yourself to dodge again—but then Dirk just drops out of the tree himself, landing in front of you in an easy crouch, _paf_. Troll is a better look for him than you would have expected. He already handled himself like a predator, and the heavier muscle of a troll frame really plays that up.

"You are a huge pain in the ass," he says.

You hug him. It takes three seconds and then he's hugging you back, hard enough that your spine cracks. You think you can actually feel his mind touch yours for a second but he cuts that off in a hurry. Maybe it ought to bug you, the idea that he can get in your head for real now instead of just being all calculating and clever enough to approximate it, but it doesn't really. Nowhere near as much as you would have thought.

"Thanks," he says gruffly. "I really... this is good."

"I needed it, too," you say. You went for how many years being okay without anyone there to hug you? Right now you can't believe your past self was for real. "I saved a girl from a dinosaur earlier, you know. And she's got your same kind of mind powers. She said she might be able to help you learn to control yours." You sock him in the arm. "If you can bring yourself to accept anyone's help."

He gives you a tiny pointy smile. "Are you going to beat me up if I try to say no?"

"Yup," you say, and you can tell he's relieved. You don't need to be a mind reader to know he needs to be strong-armed into taking care of himself.

Dirk gets an arm slung around your shoulders. He's never been touchy-feely with you but this feels like a really great time to break that habit. "Okay then. Let's do this thing."

You lead him back toward the camp, toward the halfway point where Aranea's waiting. So the challenges of your new universe aren't the ones you would have expected. That's life, you guess. You _have_ a life now. You're going to make the most of it.


End file.
